It’s 1851. Nora and Willa are the daughters of Lars Laestadius, a Lutheran minister preaching in a tiny village in Sápmi, or Lapland as it was called by outsiders in the past. Laestadius is a historical figure, a writer and temperance advocate who founded a revivalist religious movement. His family gets on well with the Sámi, but he wants his daughters to marry Swedes. Willa plans to go to Uppsala in search of a husband. Life changes when she falls in love with reindeer herder Ivvár – the very incarnation of the traditional hero: tough, attractive, elusive. So instead of going to Uppsala, she joins a Sámi group on their summer migration to the Norwegian Sea.
[ Fiction in translation: When bad choices make good storiesOpens in new window ]
Up there she meets Ivvár near the village of Skibotn – then a great marketplace. “Each of the parties of the Skibotn market – the Swedes, the Kvens, the Finns, the Norwegians, the Russians, the Sámi – had almost entirely different resources and needs for going there- the Kvens had butter but no meat; the Norwegians had metals and cloth, but no meat; the Sámi had meat, but very little butter, and so on… At least five different languages were spoken at any given time, with most of the men speaking at least two or usually three…”
[ Arctic town in 24-hour darkness: perfect spot for a murder mysteryOpens in new window ]
The book is rich in ethnographic descriptions of the way of life of the Sámi, their habitations, food, customs, religion and, above all, the northern landscape. Essential historical information on the strategies used to colonise them is integrated fairly seamlessly into the narrative. However, the core of this intelligent, enthralling, novel is the love affair of Willa and Ivvár, the intricate twists and turns of which are masterfully traced.
The account of their summer of love melds perfectly with the evocation of the bewitching Arctic landscape – a lyrical tour de force. The novel’s final dramatic denouement, which reminded me of the end of Njal’s Saga, is maybe too operatic. But this novel of epic proportions, its luminous prose written in a rhythmical storytelling voice, earns a tragic closing act. It’s a stunning work.
Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s latest books are Selected Stories (Blackstaff, 2023) and Well, You Don’t Look It (Salmon, 2024), edited with Michaela Schrage Früh
